Ethan Marks

Sound and performance artist Ethan Marks reshapes the role of the instrumentalist in live music-making. Close listening reveals a world of harmonics and overtones that Marks inhabits with his extended trumpet techniques and alternative means of sound production. A practiced realizer of both notated and graphic scores, Marks is also an extensive improviser, guided by chance, aleatory, and indeterminacy. Marks further challenges his audience by adding an additional visual medium. His goal is to make performance pieces that excite both the ears and the eyes, adding another dimension to appreciate his art. Marks’s works are dynamic, expressive, and abstract. He does not want to force a single interpretation; rather his only desire is for his audience to feel. Something.

Ethan completed a MFA in trumpet performance at the California Institute of the Arts in 2017. In 2013, he graduated with honors from the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin, earning a BM in trumpet performance. His primary teachers include Edward Carroll, Ray Sasaki, and Graham Breedlove, and he has worked extensively in classes and other contexts with Marco Blaauw, Markus Stockhausen, Peter Evans, Håkan Hardenberger, Gabriele Cassone, and Thomas Stevens.